Buffy Pop Quiz

FROM THE ARCHIVES (Buffy book reviews)

POP QUIZ

By Cynthia Boris (1999)

RATING: 3/5 Stakes

Pop Quiz is a surprisingly difficult little collection of Buffy trivia questions. Covering Seasons One through Three, the book asks everything from what music is playing when Giles arrives home to find Jenny’s body in “Passion” to the name of the boy murdered in the woods in “Beauty and the Beasts.” Not all questions are so difficult, and the book is divided up into several different types of questions: some chapters ask you to identify a specific quote, others ask the meaning of a pop culture reference, while still others are devoted to specific people or episodes.

At the end of each chapter is a score box, and if you add up the scores for each chapter you find whether you’re a Cordette (the lowest of the low in Buffy trivia knowledge), a member of the Xander Brigade, a student in the Willow Study Group, an Honorary Watcher, or, best of all, the next Slayer. Judging from my score, I’ll be hanging out with Willow a lot--which doesn’t bother me one bit. Although probably not something one wants to sit down and read from front to back, this is the perfect book for a long bus or car ride with a friend.

Punishing the Rich and Poor, Equally

FROM THE ARCHIVES (Daily Nebraskan columns)

Punishing the Rich and Poor, Equally

Jeremy Patrick jhaeman@hotmail.com

Daily Nebraskan www.dailyneb.com

December 01, 2000

"It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals."
---Justice Felix Frankfurter, Dennis v. United States

Americans have an interesting attitude towards wealth and equality. In many cases, they consider a tax or fine "equal" if, on its face, it applies to everyone equally, such as an across-the-board 5-percent sales tax.
Because the costs of basic necessities (such as food, shelter and clothing) do not increase as one's income increases, flat taxes like this clearly and disproportionately burden the poor. Most Americans simply don't care. In other cases, such as our progressive income tax, we've come to realize that taxes are equal on their face are unequal in application.
Finland has carried this concept of proportionality to its next logical step. Last week, Jaakko Rytsola, a Finnish dot-com millionaire, was fined the equivalent of $110,000 for going 43 mph in a 25-mph zone. Just a month ago, he was fined $44,100 for switching lanes dangerously. The fines set a new record in Finland, where traffic fines are assessed according to the size of the drivers' income and how fast they were going; there's also no limit on how high the fines can go.
This idea seems radical at first, but it's perfectly consistent with the point of imposing traffic fines. If we really believe traffic fines are necessary to deter dangerous driving, then we should apply the fines in a manner that will deter everyone equally. A $200 fine for speeding may deter a poor college student, but it won't have any effect on a billionaire like Bill Gates. Because each poses the same potential threat, why not punish each one equally?
Even more important than the inconsistent deterrence effects is the fact that flat fines can literally force the poor out of their apartments or homes; the same $200 fine that is an inconvenience for most of us, is life-threatening to someone who only makes $800 a month working full-time at a minimum-wage job.
It's not as if proportional fines are unheard of in the United States. For serious criminal offenses, the Federal Sentencing Reform Act instructs judges to take account of "the defendant's income, earning capacity, and financial resources" in imposing fines. Judges do the same thing when determining bail; they know that imposing the same amount on every defendant would simply punish the poor and fail miserably in preventing a wealthy person from fleeing.
Any practical difficulties with implementing proportional traffic fines have apparently already been solved by the Finns. In a country like the United States, the real difficulty is that the people making the decision have to put themselves in a worse position than they're currently in. Because legislators and their most powerful constituents are disproportionately drawn from the upper-middle and wealthy classes, they will suffer the burden of increased fines.
As John Rawls would say, a just decision could be reached only by placing ourselves behind a "veil of ignorance," where it is equally possible that we are rich, poor, or somewhere in the middle. It remains doubtful whether abstract notions of fairness and equality are sufficient to overcome sheer self-interest.
For what it's worth, Jaakko Rytsola took his record-setting fine with aplomb.
"The drag was nice and wide, and I felt good. It's great to drive when there's no one around," he said.
Presumably, he means that it's great to drive when there's no one, including police officers, around.

La Lune des jardins sans soleil

I really liked Jean-Louis Trudel's La Lune des jardins sans soleil ("The Moon of Sunless Gardens "). It's a very original, creative science-fiction novel set in Earth's future when much of the population lives in vast underground colonies. Because each colony has strict population limits, unauthorized children are sent to live in orphanages where they have only a life of drudgery to look forward to (and many turn to drugs or even prostitution). One of the orphans, Corinne, decides to take a chance and stowaway aboard a military starship full of "bonsai-children", genetically-modified warriors bred to fight a war that ended long ago. The bonsai-children adopt Corinne as their own and decide to try to rescue the rest of the orphans left behind.

A One-Sentence Analysis of Brown's QB Issues

This is hilarious, comprehensive, and unfortunately quite accurate.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=fleming/091007&sportCat=nfl

A Conversation with God

FROM THE ARCHIVES (Daily Nebraskan columns)

A Conversation with God

Jeremy Patrick (jhaeman@hotmail.com)

Daily Nebraskan (www.dailyneb.com)

November 20, 2000

"When a certain shameless fellow mockingly asked a pious old man what God had done before the creation of the world, the latter aptly countered that he had been building hell for the curious."
---Calvin, Institutes

Setting: The philosophy section of a library near closing time. A young scholar sits at a table thumbing through the pages of Cosmopolitan
Scene 1: God enters stage left in a flash of blinding light.
GOD: Rejoice my child! I am the Lord thy God. The Day of Judgment nears! Repent, and heaven shall be thine.
JAY: Yeah. You know, I'm really not into that right now.
GOD: What impertinence! Blasphemy! I am thy Lord and Savior. I have come to absolve thee of thy sins; one must only profess thy faith and the Rapture shall begin.
JAY: I guess, whatever. I really don't think I believe in you anymore.
GOD: But thou art speaking to me!
JAY: True. But I could just as well be dreaming, having an acid flashback or suffering from an organic brain disorder. Besides, I don't think it's rational to believe in God.
GOD: Rational! My pious servant, St. Thomas Acquinas, once said "If the only way open to us for the knowledge of God was solely that of reason, the human race would remain in the blackest shadows of ignorance."
JAY: Yes, but Locke believed in you too, and he said, "I find that every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly, and where it fails them, they cry out, 'It is a matter of faith, and above reason.'" And wasn't it Hume who said "A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence"?
GOD: Hume! That darn atheist! Look what his little triumph got him: a special place in Hell.
JAY: You sound different.
GOD: What do you mean?
JAY: Well, you were talking all "Thee" and "Thou" and shit; now you sound like a normal guy.
GOD: Oh, right. That's mostly just to impress people; I get tired of being so formal all the time.
JAY: Anyway, the library's closing, and I really should be going.
GOD: Wait! There is still time to save your soul. All you have to do is believe. Have I not always been there for you? Remember that time in seventh grade when you wanted to ask Michelle Wolford to your first middle-school dance? You were so nervous! But you prayed that she'd say "yes," and I delivered.
JAY: Yeah, that was pretty cool. If all life were like seventh grade. ... But hey, where the hell were you a few months later when she ditched me to go to Mark Anderson's birthday party? I was crushed! And ever since I stopped praying, pretty much the same number of good and bad things have happened. I think it's really all based on chance.
GOD: My son, sincere prayer is a sign of love and obedience.
JAY: So it's really just to pump up your ego? That sounds silly. I think it was Kant who said that prayer "is nothing more than a wish directed to a Being who needs no such information regarding the inner disposition of the wisher; therefore nothing is accomplished by it."
GOD: Yes, but that good philosopher argued convincingly that my existence was necessary for the existence of morality.
JAY: Only for an almost ridiculously rigid morality which nobody ever follows. Besides, you have to admit that there's plenty of evil-acting theists and plenty of good-natured disbelievers.
GOD: Perhaps.
JAY: And his belief that the existence of morality was an inarguable fact was simply wishful thinking built upon metaphysical clap-trap. Or, as Nietzsche might have said, "There are no moral phenomena at all, only moral interpretations of phenomena."
GOD: You misunderstand Kant; he believed that the existence of morality was a necessary prerequisite to the existence of freedom. Besides, if you don't believe in God or immortality, what's the purpose of life?
JAY: I really don't know. I think before we try to figure out what the meaning of life is, we should find out whether there is a meaning to life.
GOD: That's nothing more than nihilist rhetoric. You're going to end up like your hero Nietzsche, insane and dead.
JAY: I'm really a fan of Sartre myself, but that's beside the point. Kant's belief in morality as necessary for freedom is a contradiction; for if eternal, universal morality exists, man is reduced to a mere automaton, always following the dictates of something he has no control over.
GOD: The same is true of your materialism, except it's the dictates of your much vaunted "laws of science." As Kierkegaard said, "The fatalist is in despair - he has lost God, and therefore himself as well; for if he has no God, neither has he a self."
JAY: I'm not sure what he means by "self." But I do know that if freedom really does exist, it means that I am free to define myself as I wish and decide upon my own reasons for being. If, that is, I decide I even need a reason for being.
GOD: I can see that there is no hope for you. With over 95 percent of your fellows believing in me, you're sure going to be lonely in Hell.
JAY: I don't think so. As Sartre said, "Hell is other people."
God departs stage right in another flash of light. The young scholar closes his Cosmopolitan and picks up the newest issue of Harper's Bazaar.
(c) 2000 Jeremy Patrick

Buffy: The Postcards

FROM THE ARCHIVES (Buffy book reviews)

THE POSTCARDS(1999)

RATING: 4/5 Stakes

Shortly after Buffy the Vampire Slayer became a pop-culture phenomenon, Pocket Books released a book of 22 Buffy postcards. The front of each card is a full-color photo of one or more cast members, while the back contains a quote from a first, second, or third season episode. Although many of the photos are the standard publicity shots that have graced countless posters and magazine covers, a few I haven’t seen anywhere else. All in all, this is a fun thing to add to the collection or to use to brighten up a far-away friend’s day.

The postcards included are:

1. Buffy

2. Angel

3. Xander

4. Willow

5. Buffy and Angel

6. Giles

7. Xander and Cordelia

8. Buffy

9. Oz

10. Angel

11. Spike and Drusilla

12. Willow

13. Buffy and Angel

14. Cordelia

15. Willow and Oz

16. Giles

17. Angel

18. Xander

19. Buffy

20. Xander and Willow

21. Buffy and Angel

22. Season Three Cast

Blood: A Tale

J.M. DeMatteis' Blood: A Tale is a very artsy comic, one of those things you really have to be in the right mood for or it seems like pretentious tosh. Told through gorgeous painted artwork and almost-poem like dialogue and narration, the story is quite allegorical and perhaps even metaphysical. At its most basic level, it's about a man turned into a vampire who meets a woman and a strange chubby fella named "Little One" and their adventures through a strange psychedelic landscape. It's a good example of the type of material that Marvel's Epic line and DC's Vertigo line produced, in which plot and dialogue are often secondary (if existent at all) to creating a certain kind of mood and tone. Blood: A Tale really isn't my cup of tea, but I can say I liked it better the second time I read it, when I knew what to expect and went in with a more patient attitude.